1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and program for mining data in a personal information manager database.
2. Description of the Related Art
Organizations and individuals use scheduling and calendaring software programs to schedule their daily activities. At some point, a person may want to know the extent to which they have met their scheduled goals. For instance, an individual may want to know how often they were late or early for business meetings. A company may want to know how much time individuals in fact spent at scheduled activities or at designated work locations.
In the current art, to make such determinations as to whether an individual adhered to the scheduled events, the organization would have to question the individual to gather information on actual activity. Such information of actual activity may be difficult to accurately gather unless a person keeps a written diary of their activities on a daily basis. Otherwise, most people if questioned on their actual activity a few days following the activity will be unable to relate accurate information. Given these constraints in gathering actual activity information, the ability to accurately compare and analyze actual versus scheduled activity is not a capability that has been developed and offered as of date.
For these reasons, there is a need in the art for technology to allow individuals and organizations to accurately determine the extent to which actual activity of a person coincides with scheduled events.
Provided is a method, system, and program for analyzing data within a personal information management program. Position records are provided in a database for at least one user. Each position record includes a time period value and event information indicating an event that occurred with respect to the user during the time period. The time period value and event information in each position record is based on time information and position coordinates generated by a wireless device associated with the user that indicate a location of the wireless device for time periods. The database is queried to determine position records for one user that satisfy at least one search criteria. Information is generated characterizing data in the determined position records.
In further implementations, the search criteria includes specified event information, wherein the query determines all position records having event information matching the specified event information. For all the determined position records that include event information matching the user specified event information, the time period values are aggregated to determine a total time, wherein the generated information indicates the total time associated with the event identified by the specified event information.
Still further, the event information may identify a location and the search criteria may include one specified location, wherein the total time indicates a time period the user of the wireless device was at the identified location.
Additionally, the event information may identify an activity and the search criteria may include one specified activity, wherein the time value indicates the time period during which the user of the wireless device was engaged in the identified activity.
In still further implementations, the database includes scheduled event records for at least one user, wherein each scheduled event record includes a time period value and event information identifying a scheduled event at the time period value. The database is queried to determine all scheduled event records for the one user that satisfy the at least one search criteria that was used to query the position records for the user. In such case, the generated information includes a comparison of the determined scheduled event records and the determined position records.
In further implementations, the database is queried to determine position records for one user that satisfy at least one search criteria including specified event information. A determination is then made of an aggregate amount of actual from the time periods included in the determined position records for the event identified by the specified event information and of an aggregate amount of scheduled time from the time periods included in the determined scheduled event records for the event identified by the specified event information. information is displayed indicating the aggregate amount of scheduled time and the aggregate amount of actual user time for the event identified by the user specified event information.
The described implementations provide a technique for data mining information in a database that includes records indicating events and time periods of a user that are based on positioned coordinates generated by a wireless device. The described implementations provide a technique to gather and analyze information on the whereabouts of one or more users having records in the database. The database may further include scheduled events for the user. In such case, the described implementations provide techniques for comparing data concerning scheduled events and actual realization of the scheduled events for specified time periods.
The described implementations, thus, provide tools for analyzing and tracking user activity and presence at particular locations over periods of time.